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My name is Hermien Schuttenbeld. I have a background is in Early Childhood Development and Occupational Therapy. Working with children has been the red line through my life. When I started having my own children and ended up doing various activities with my first child, I figured I may as well get a few more friends to join for his social benefit.  

This is how in 2005 the Little Blue Stars Preschool Program started a few mornings and afternoons a week. In 2010 due to personal circumstances, I had to make rapid changes and decided to operate as a full-time day home, providing more hours of care for children and parents.  

While operating the day home these last 6 years, I recognized that various parents wanted their children to participate in preschool. The challenges that I saw with my day home parents were that they had difficulties arranging transportation for their the children to go back and forth from daycare to preschool. The parents who decided to put their children in preschool were under more stress running back and forth for a few hours of preschool a day or had difficulties finding people to transfer their children. At the same time, children seemed more tired and confused with the transferring between two different environments per day and had a harder time separating from their parents. Other parents just decided due to this difficulty not to send their children to preschool, simply because it was not doable or to avoid all the extra stress.

This was not the only complaint parents had. Often comments were made such as; “It seems as if I just dropped my child off and now I have to pick him/her up again. I did not get anything done”.  Meaning that the preschool hours are too short to get some real work or appointments done in that time. 

I came to the conclusion that it would absolutely make sense to operate as a Preschool - Day Care Combination.   This would resolve the issue of transferring children back and forth to two different environments and would reduce a significant amount of stress for the children and the parents. With this preschool - daycare combo parents don’t have to stress and can set up an actual productive day while their child is attending preschool & child care in one setting.

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Welcome to

Papillon 
& 
The Little Blue Stars Program

Introduction to Papillon & The Little Blue Stars Program